EC folk are a bit "late" in tapping into the cultural ferment associated with new spiritualities ... The major culture shift occurred in the 1980s and early 1990s, with new spiritualites moving from the countercultural fringe into the mainstream and also entering into deep academic discourses. The movers and shakers have influenced both the grassroots and the academy. Today, the residual effects that are now being witnessed by EC (such as in web-blogs and in festivals) concerns a fluffy commercialised version of the serious and original cosmological quake.
What I'm further interested in, though, is the research of Paul Heelas et al. in Kendal which seemed to show that people involved in 'new agery' was a proportion similar to the churches, ie not huge. I need to get hold of the book, but when I do I will be reading it with a question about what counted as involvement. This is because, the nature of the beast makes Phil's observation very relevant: the cultural reach of the perspectives may be far greater than what shows up in a way analogous to church attendance. In fact the people who attend certain kinds of spiritual practice events regularly may be quite a minority of those who are 'into' new spirituality, because the nature of the thing is not institutional or even necessarily affiliational... we shall see.
circle of pneuma: Emerging Church - Discerning Cultural Shifts:
Filed in: spirituality, mission, Christian, postmodern, New_Age, emerging
4 comments:
Andii, I am fully with you here, I head up a network of groups who place stalls into Mind Body Soul exhibitions here in the UK but am becoming increasingly concerned that w are merely tickling the surface and not engaging with those involved in the culture at a deeper level either through our own senes of what our missional engagement/ vision is all about or because we are as Phil has said we are dealing with the froth and not the coffee beans!
Thanks Sally. I nearly added that I actually think that this is more analogous to what is sometimes termed "folk religion". In fact, my hunch is that the basis for folk religion has shifted in the last 30 years from something that takes cues from a broadly Judeo-Christian worldview to one that references chi, karma, channelling, human potential, etc ...
Andii
You are spot on about folk religion and I've tossed up a note to that effcet on my blog.
Incidentally the Kendal research from Paul Heelas and Linda Woodhead does indicate that participation rates/membership in "new age" activities there are not necessarily very high. So they call for caution in exaggerating about the quantifiable numbers that suggest a "spiritual revolution".
However their work by no means negates the implication that a much deeper beneath the surface cultural shift is occurring.
Thanks Phil. You wrote "Kendal research ... does indicate that participation rates/membership in "new age" activities there are not necessarily very high. So they call for caution in exaggerating about the quantifiable numbers...their work by no means negates the implication that a much deeper beneath the surface cultural shift is occurring"
That's just what I was trying to say and to give a reason why we should interpret the Heelas/Woodhead figures in a wider cultural context. The reason why it has been in my mind is because I've been in company with some who quote the Kendal research in such a way as to diminish the importance of new DIY spiritualities, and I think that would be a missiological and pastoral mistake given that the cultural climate, and therefore the spiritual ecosystem, has almost certainly changed. What I think we should also be interacting with is the recent research on young people's ["generation Y"] spirituality which could be interpreted/used also to play down the new spiritualities' significance if we are not careful. I've also written a different perspective on that here suggesting that we need to be careful in view of clear signs of distress in some sections of youth culture, not to write them all off as died in the wool hedonists...
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